Out of 200 Ripple customers, only five fringe institutions/startups (not even real banks) to use xRapid and XRP
- Ripplenet now has more than 200 customers worldwide
Popular and controversial cross-border payment solution XRP relies utilizes an incubator called Ripplenet to expand its adoption and utility across the world. This incubator has slowly grown over the years and has recently been expanded with 13 new financial institutions. Thanks to these latest additions, Ripplenet currently services over 200 customers in over 40 countries across six continents.
These latest additions include Euro Exim Bank, SendFriend, JNFX, FTCS, Ahli Bank of Kuwait, Transpaygo, BFC Bahrain, ConnectPay, GMT, WorldCom Finance, Olympia Trust Company, Pontual/USEND and Rendimento. JNFX, SendFriend, Transpaygo, FTCS and Euro Exim Bank will leverage the digital asset XRP to source liquidity on-demand when sending payments on behalf of their customers. Institutions such as CIMB or Olympia Trust Company will not be using XRP for liquidity but rather for immediate settlement procedures.
Brad Garlingohouse, the CEO of Ripple, has expressed his satisfaction with the way the incubator has evolved over time, reiterating the company’s desire to keep the thing grow and help customers in the future as well:
“In 2018, nearly 100 financial institutions joined RippleNet, and we’re now signing two—sometimes three—new customers per week. We also saw a 350 percent increase last year in customers sending live payments, and we’re beginning to see more customers flip the switch and leverage XRP for on-demand liquidity. At the end of the day, our goal is to make sure our customers can provide excellent, efficient cross-border payments experiences for their customers, wherever they are in the world.”
Only fringe “institutions” to use xRapid and XRP
However, as great as this news is for the Ripple company, there is little in it for the XRP holders. Ripple executives are often contradictory in their statements on the matter:
Of the 200 partnerships Ripple has, ONLY five actually use XRP the cryptocurrency.
JNFX is not a bank, it is a foreign currency broker, “specialists in non-speculative trading”. So, a forex broker, that is “huge”.
SendFriend is essentially an app for Philipino expats to send money back home. So, again, not a bank but a small startup.
Similar to SendFriend, the third customer of xRapid is another startup called TranspayGo with “massive” 7800 transactions per month.
FCTS is a scandinavian startup, a e-money and prepaid issuer based in Stockholm. So, another not a bank.
And finally a bank – Euro Exim Bank, a 7 years old bank headquartered and licensed in St Lucia and with a representative office in London that specializes in providing financial services to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), regardless of where in the world they are located.
This means that the headlines showcasing Ripple’s partnerships with more and more banks are good — Ripple the company is succeeding — but also don’t mean much for XRP gaining adoption.
Now this isn’t to say that banks will never adopt xRapid (and start using XRP). In fact, this has been a part of the Ripple business plan from the very beginning. Get banks using xCurrent and then cross-sell them into xRapid. Banks may come to love xRapid.
Or they might not.
Outlook
Ripple itself sees its payment system as the future global standard for interbank payments, enabling cost-effective and traceable payments in real time. In 2018, the National Bank of Kuwait followed partners such as the Japanese bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and the Malaysian CIMB Group Holdings Bhd into RippleNet.
What XRP wallets are most trusted and used?
Which applications from the Ripple product range are to be used, however, left both sides open. It is also questionable whether Ripple’s xRapid platform or the XRP token will play a role in the bank’s concept in the future.
You’re forgetting Bittrex, Bitso, Coins.ph, Bitstamp, Cuallix, Mercury FX, Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union, SBI Virtual Currencies, IDT, Viamericas and Bitrue.
You are forgetting a couple of things. xRapid only went live in the fall of 2017. There were three companies announced at that time. This go around, they announced five more to a total of 8 in the matter of less than three months. Please correct your article.